Life at Lake Norman State Park

September 7, 2012

We arrived on September 1st to our new home for the next three months.  This is our 3rd year here at the state park and fall is a wonderful  time to be here and enjoy the beautiful weather and spending time with Sarah, Matt, Hannah, Kyle and Baby Anderson!

Sarah and the kids were here just a few hours after we arrived and spent the next two nights! Kyle finally got to put his tent up that he got in June for his 7th birthday. I got to sleep with Kyle Sat night and I'm thankful for an air mattress and an electric fan!! Sun night I talked Hannah into sleeping in the tent, she was very reluctant but I told her she had to try. I asked her what she was afraid of and she said.... a storm might hurt us, somebody might come and try to harm us....I left my book light on, said a prayer, turned to her and put my arm around her and she was sound alseep in less than three minutes!! First thing she said when she woke up the next morning...."Nanna, You Tricked Me!!!"  Too funny! I love being the kind of grandma who makes special memories with her grandkids, even if they think I tricked them!!

One of the things I love about being here is walking through the woods, the smell of pines and the wood scents, birds and crickets, and the dogs love the squirrels! We love it when we see deer! One day on our way to Sarah's we saw six, two of them babies!  One of the Rangers showed us a picture he took just a few weeks ago of a buck with a crooked horn!  That reminds us of Kramer because we always call Kramer old crooked mouth and Ranger loves it! He never calls him Kramer, always, Crooked Mouth!

I have set four goals for myself for the next year, while I know there will be days they don't all get done, it is what I'm reaching for! I want to ride my bike everyday, I want to hike or take a long walk everyday, I want to work on my cross stitch project and I want to scrapbook something everyday!  I'm really excited to share my goals with you so you can help keep me accountable!!!

I haven't worked on my cross stitch project in two years and am super excited to include it in my daily list of things to do!!  It is a picture of a pixie elf that reminds me of Kelsey's best friend and roommate who was killed by a drunk driver. It is a huge project and is on 11 count fabric which is one stitch over one thread! The chart is on 12 pages!! I panicked when I couldn't find the chart that I mark off my completed stitches on, but I made a copy of the original and lucky for me I pretty much try to follow the chart from top to bottom and was about 3/4 of the way done with page 2! By today I am all caught up on what is completed and spent the afternoon sitting outside and stitching!

Aging Parents.....so hard, so sad but something we all face.

I have spent the last 4 days visiting my parents.  For those of you who don't know, my Mom is in the last stages of Alzheimer's. What determines a "stage" I'm not sure and I don't really care. My Mom was always strongly independent and active.  She loved to travel, live on her own, enjoy her family and her pets.  After retirement in 1999, she moved to Florida and lived next to my sister in her own mobile home.  She got a part time job and enjoyed her time and her money! Sometimes she enjoyed spending money she didn't have!! But don't we all!! We lived in Florida for almost 2 years from 2007 to 2009 helping take care of her when she was first diagnosed with Alzheimer's.  We got the wonderful job of taking her to the doctor for evaluation, watching her try to answer questions she didn't know the answer too, repeat this sequence of words, tell me what this is....on and on!  Trying to explain that what we had to do was for her safety and her own good.  That my job was to keep her as independent as possible for as long as possible!  Of course, she told us she didn't have the "A" word! She wouldn't even say it!  Then it was, "I just want to know how the doctor is going to take this thing out of my head!"

Then we had to take her driver's license away and then her car! Of course, she thought I was just being mean to her.  We left in 2009 to travel and workcamp in California. She lived next to my sister for another year and in 2010 we moved her back to Ohio where we have more family to watch over her.  She lived in a "senior" apartment right across the street from my sister for a year, and then in April of 2011, we moved her into a nursing home.  She is now in the Alzheimer's unit here close to family.

Someone goes almost everyday to see her and make sures she eats.  She doesn't know us any more.  It is all very sad and this story has been told hundreds and thousands of times around the world.  Today she repeated "I" "Love" "Donna" for me. Of course she had no idea what she was saying or to who! But I treasured it. It might be the last time I ever here it from her.  It probably will be. 

But as sad as all of this is, I rest assured that my Mom knows the Lord as her Saviour and that one day we will meet again in Heaven!! There will be no more sorrow, no more pain and no more saddness and tears! We will be reborn with totally healthy bodies and will spend our days praising our Lord.  We will have all of eternity to be together and to enjoy each other! This gives me a PEACE that surpasses all understanding!! I am so thankful for this peace and this knowledge! And I am thankful for all the pictures I ever took of Mom, good or bad!! I treasure the happy memories and choose to forget the bad ones!  In the end, we must live one day at a time, because that is all we have, and enjoy it as if it were our last! It might be the last one we remember!!

Safely arrived at Poor Farmers Campground north of Troy, Ohio. My family is about 15 mintues away and tonight we went out to dinner with all my sisters, that are here, to celebrate our youngest sister's birthday! Tomorrow we might go kayaking at Kiser Lake! We fell in love with kayaking this past winter while in Florida and have really missed it! Never had time while at the Beach, Randy is always working!!

We are looking forward to our stay at Lake Norman. Just checked the campground reservation and looks like they are full up for the weekend, we expect a busy weekend as we get there on a holiday weekend!

We are thankful for safe travels and for the wonderful summer we had at Beulah Beach! So excited to scrapbook my pictures I took all summer!

Camper washed....checked! One dog washed.....checked! Dentist tomorrow to finish my crown....9 am, which gives me the rest of the day to wash and brush Shasha! Somehow that job just wipes me out! Had fun visiting with Jami and Taylee and Mia, and a fun photo shoot with the "Boys of Summer" and the "Men of Summer"! Randy washed the camper today. Always a job, but since we didn't have the big tree behind us it wasn't too bad this year. The spiders are everywhere though! I think they like hiding all around my camper because they don't have any trees to hide in! We have lots of trees at Lake Norman and lots of spiders and huge spider webs! Last fall I got this awesome picture of a spider eating another bug! Said bug was bigger than the spider! Yuck! But the kids in Kyle's kindergarten class thought it was cool! I need to post that picture!! Off to figure out more about blogging and how to share this thing!

Leaving....It's hard to say good-bye to a place you love and to people who have become your family! But there are places to go, people to see and things to do. We leave our beloved Beulah Beach on Friday, August 23, 2012 to head south to North Carolina and three months with our oldest daughter and her family, which includes our three grandchildren! While we are super excited to see our family, it's hard to say we won't be back to the Beach until 2014! We plan on taking a cross country trip next year that includes Texas, Arkansas, California and lots of National Parks out west! We are super excited to see what God has made and to share it with you! So join us on our journey and enjoy the wonders of both technology and God's creation!!

On the road to somewhere Beautiful.......